Conventional agrochemicals towards nano-biopesticides: an overview on recent advances

Pesticides are classified into several groups based on their structure, including fungicides, insecticides, herbicides, bactericides, and rodenticides. Pesticides are toxic to both humans and pests. For pest control, a very small amount of pesticides reach their target pests. Therefore, nearly all pesticides move through the environment and exert adverse effects on beneficial biota and public health. These chemicals pollute the water, soil, and atmosphere of the ecosystem. Agricultural workers in greenhouses and open fields, exterminators of house pests, and workers in the pesticide industry are occupationally exposed to pesticides. Pesticide exposure in the general population primarily happens through the consumption of food and water contaminated with pesticide residues; however, substantial exposure can also occur outside or inside the house. Currently, intelligent, responsive, biodegradable, and biocompatible materials have attracted considerable interest for the formulation of green, safe, and efficient pesticides. It was indicated that utilizing nanotechnology to design and prepare targeted pesticides with an environmentally responsive controlled release via chemical modifications and compounds offers great potential for creating new formulations. Furthermore, biopesticides include microbial pesticides, which are naturally happening biochemical pesticides. In addition, pesticidal substances generated by plants with added genetic materials, i.e., plant-incorporated protectants (PIPs), have emerged. Based on the foregoing evidence, various types of pesticides are summarized in this review for the first time. Here, new pesticides including nano-pesticides and biopesticides are discussed while focusing on the most recent findings on targeted and safe nano-formulated biopesticides and nano-pesticides. Graphical Abstract

Predicting environmentally responsive transgenerational differential DNA methylated regions (epimutations) in the genome using a hybrid deep-machine learning approach

Background Deep learning is an active bioinformatics artificial intelligence field that is useful in solving many biological problems, including predicting altered epigenetics such as DNA methylation regions. Deep learning (DL) can learn an informative representation that addresses the need for defining relevant features. However, deep learning models are computationally expensive, and they require large training datasets to achieve good classification performance. Results One approach to addressing these challenges is to use a less complex deep learning network for feature selection and Machine Learning (ML) for classification. In the current study, we introduce a hybrid DL-ML approach that uses a deep neural network for extracting molecular features and a non-DL classifier to predict environmentally responsive transgenerational differential DNA methylated regions (DMRs), termed epimutations, based on the extracted DL-based features. Various environmental toxicant induced epigenetic transgenerational inheritance sperm epimutations were used to train the model on the rat genome DNA sequence and use the model to predict transgenerational DMRs (epimutations) across the entire genome. Conclusion The approach was also used to predict potential DMRs in the human genome. Experimental results show that the hybrid DL-ML approach outperforms deep learning and traditional machine learning methods.

Integrating Urban Wind Power in Wellington

<p>The aim of my research is to show that a wind powered, environmentally responsive, energy producing building can be integrated in Wellington’s city centre and produce enough electricity to be economically and environmentally feasible. The building should serve as a positive icon for wind energy and allow a high degree of public interaction to promote and educate the public about the benefits of wind produced energy. With enough energy producing buildings the energy grid can be created directly inside the very cities which require the energy, leaving the picturesque untouched landscapes wind farm free. A building which has the ability to create its own energy also bears the responsibility to maximise its energy efficiency and environmental performance. The building must be environmentally responsive allowing it to respond and adapt to changing weather conditions to maximise performance. The main design goal will be environmental performance, which is the quantity of energy exchanged from external sources required to keep a building at a desirable temperature and allow all of the building’s services to operate fully. These include heating and cooling, electrical, plumbing and lighting.</p>

Integrating Urban Wind Power in Wellington

<p>The aim of my research is to show that a wind powered, environmentally responsive, energy producing building can be integrated in Wellington’s city centre and produce enough electricity to be economically and environmentally feasible. The building should serve as a positive icon for wind energy and allow a high degree of public interaction to promote and educate the public about the benefits of wind produced energy. With enough energy producing buildings the energy grid can be created directly inside the very cities which require the energy, leaving the picturesque untouched landscapes wind farm free. A building which has the ability to create its own energy also bears the responsibility to maximise its energy efficiency and environmental performance. The building must be environmentally responsive allowing it to respond and adapt to changing weather conditions to maximise performance. The main design goal will be environmental performance, which is the quantity of energy exchanged from external sources required to keep a building at a desirable temperature and allow all of the building’s services to operate fully. These include heating and cooling, electrical, plumbing and lighting.</p>

Auxetic structures from 3D printed hybrid textiles

Auxetic structures have been produced using 3D printing and knitted textile materials. A review of other auxetic textiles is presented along with the new materials. A range of configurations were developed, prototyped, and tested to demonstrate significant auxetic response, including Poisson’s ratio up to negative one. The concept of 4D textiles was employed to create environmentally responsive hinges in some structures, allowing the material to change shape in response to thermal stimulus.